A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday rejected an effort by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos to dismiss a defamation lawsuit levied against him by former President Donald Trump .
U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga denied the motion to dismiss Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC News and Stephanopoulos, who was accused of mischaracterizing a jury's finding that a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexual assault in the separate defamation case brought by former columnist E. Jean Carroll.
"Defendants have not met their burden of proving the fair report privilege applies," Altonaga, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote in a 21-page order. "Any remaining questions as to the reasonableness of Stephanopoulos’s statements are not for resolution on a motion to dismiss."
Trump's defamation suit stems from statements made by Stephanopoulos during a March 10, 2024, interview with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). During the broadcast on This Week hosted by Stephanopoulos, he repeatedly stated Trump had been “found liable for rape” in connection with the Carroll case. This assertion, Trump claimed, was defamatory, because the jury did not come to that specific conclusion.
The background of the litigation involves two related cases, known as Carroll I and Carroll II, presided over by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in the Southern District of New York. In Carroll II, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll but did not find him liable for rape under New York Penal Law. Despite this, Kaplan characterized the jury’s finding as equivalent to rape in common parlance, leading to some confusion and ambiguity in public interpretations of the verdict.
Trump commended the decision in a statement to Truth Social on Wednesday, calling it a "A BIG WIN TODAY IN HIGH FLORIDA COURT AGAINST ABC FAKE NEWS, AND LIDDLE’ GEORGE SLOPADOPOLUS."
"A POWERFUL CASE! BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WILL BE FORCED BY THE COURTS TO START TELLING THE TRUTH. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR OUR COUNTRY. MAGA2024," Trump wrote.
In response to the allegations of defamation, ABC News and Stephanopoulos argued that the statements made during the interview were substantially true and protected by the fair report privilege, which shields journalists from some legal liability for their accurate coverage of official proceedings or documents. They contended that Kaplan’s interpretation justified their characterization of the jury’s findings.
However, Altonaga found that these arguments could not be conclusively resolved at this stage of the lawsuit. She noted that while Kaplan had indeed offered an interpretation aligning the jury’s findings with a common understanding of rape, the jury’s explicit verdict did not support the specific language used by Stephanopoulos. This distinction, she ruled, created enough ambiguity to warrant further examination by a jury.
In the motion to dismiss the case, the defendants argued that Kaplan’s rulings in Carroll I and II should preclude Trump’s current defamation claims. Altonaga disagreed, stating that the context and specific statements in the present case were sufficiently distinct from those in the Carroll cases to allow Trump’s lawsuit to proceed.
The fair report privilege, which protects journalists when reporting on official proceedings, was also cited by the defense. Altonaga acknowledged that while this privilege offers broad protections, it does not apply when the reporting is misleading or lacks crucial context.
Given the possibility for Stephanopoulos’s statements to mislead viewers about the jury’s actual findings, she determined that this defense could not be decided at this stage.
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The case will now proceed to further litigation, where both parties will have the opportunity to present their evidence and arguments in detail.
The Washington Examiner contacted ABC News for a statement.
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